New cases reported in Japan
According to Haruki Ogawa, a health ministry spokesman, 21 more students reported symptoms of swine flu. This includes nine high school students in Osaka, western Japan, who tested positive while another 12 in Kobe city are suspected of being infected.
The country confirmed its first case of local transmission of swine flu, a high school student of Kobe, about 270 miles west of Tokyo. The child had not traveled overseas but tested positive for swine flu after coming down with fever.
As a precautionary measure the government ordered the closure of schools in the Kobe district and also cancelled the annual festival and other events lined up for the weekend.
The scare of the spreading virus prompted people at stores, restaurants and officials at railway stations in the district to resort to wearing masks.
"We have not determined how the virus spread in the region, and we are doing our best to track down the route of the infections and contain them," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said.
The new cases take the number of confirmed swine flu infections in Japan to 25. Japan had confirmed its first cases of the influenza earlier this month when a school teacher and three students who flew to Tokyo from Canada via Detroit had tested positive. Fortunately all have recovered.
Cases in China
China's Health Ministry yesterday confirmed its third swine flu infection, an 18-year-old woman who recently returned to Beijing from school in New York.
The woman identified as Liu, arrived in the city on May 11, by Continental Airlines flight. On complaints of fever, headache, cough and sore muscles she was hospitalized. Suspecting swine flu, Liu was shifted to the Beijing's infectious diseases hospital late last week.
Lab tests confirmed the diagnosis on Saturday. The ministry said people in close touch with the women, her mother and the taxi driver who took her to hospital, have been placed under observation. However, neither has displayed any symptoms of the virus.
With Liu, the total number on the mainland in China is now three. The first two cases were Chinese nationals who had been studying in the United States and Canada.
Hong Kong has another two cases, which includes a Mexican man who flew there via Shanghai. As a precautionary measure nearly 100 people, including some Americans have been quarantined in hotels and hospitals in Beijing and other mainland cities.
Update on A/H1N1 flu outbreaks worldwide
Thirty-eight countries have now confirmed more than 8,450 cases of the flu strain which prompted the World Heath Organization (WHO) to raise its global pandemic alert level to 5 on a 6-point scale.
According to the WHO, confirmed deaths worldwide are 75, with 68 in Mexico, five in the United States, one in Canada and one in Costa Rica.
Face masks
"The scare of the spreading virus prompted people at stores, restaurants and officials at railway stations in the district to resort to wearing masks."
As a resident of Japan, I need to point out that most Japanese people wear face masks regularly. This is prompted by dust, colds, hayfever and general hypochondria! (Sneezing and nose-blowing are bad manners here, as is not wearing a face mask if sniffling.)
So it is misleading to attribute this to swine flu.
USA: The "New Opium" Addicts?
It seems that the USA is now the opium addicts that China was 150 years ago. As EconoChristian.com shows, the US' trade deficit with China is large, and Americans are consuming more cheap junk just like the Chinese were 150 years ago from the british east india company. It's the US' turn to be addicted to cheap junk.
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